CAMBODIA SLAYING ANGERS JAPANESE

Merrill Goozner, Chicago TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

The tensions that have divided Japan since it sent 743 peacekeeping troops to Cambodia last fall erupted anew Thursday after suspected Khmer Rouge guerrillas killed a young civilian Japanese UN volunteer and his interpreter.

Japanese opposition parties demanded that the government bring home the troops, who are the first deployed under a new law that permits Japanese soldiers to serve overseas in non-combat roles. The government refused.

Atsuhito Nakata, 25, and his interpreter were driving in north-central Cambodia on Thursday when they were killed, a United Nations spokesman said. Nakata called his headquarters by radio after being detained by unidentified gunmen, but the connection went dead. He and Cambodian interpreter Lay Sok Phiep were later found shot to death.

The University of Osaka graduate had studied English at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 1989.

He went to Cambodia last July to help supervise elections scheduled for next month, one of 30 Japanese volunteers supplementing the troop presence.

Nakata and the interpreter were the fifth and sixth UN personnel slain in the past month in what appears to be a Khmer Rouge campaign to disrupt the UN-sponsored elections.

Hours after Nakata's death, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali addressed about 1,000 members of the 22,000-member UN peace force in Phnom Penh.

He acknowledged that security "has deteriorated in recent weeks" but insisted that the UN "will not be intimidated by violence or threats."

In Japan, the shootings triggered calls by opposition parties for the government to remove its troops from Cambodia.

"This shakes the entire premise of the PKO (peacekeeping operation) law," said Tetsu Ueda, a Socialist Party member of the Diet, or parliament. "They can't get away with saying this is just an accident."

The PKO law, approved last year over sometimes virulent public protests, restricts Japanese participation in overseas peacekeeping operations to non-combat situations.

A government spokesman vowed to stay the course.

"We are particularly outraged at attacks against UN volunteers who have dedicated themselves to securing a lasting peace in Cambodia," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono.

He said Japan still plans to send monitors for next month's election but will ask the UN mission for tighter security.

Experts predicted public opposition to Japan's overseas role will mount as the Cambodian elections draw near.

Article 9 of Japan's postwar constitution bars the government from using military force to settle international disputes. Upholding the pacifist clause has been a bedrock of opposition politics since the end of the war.

In recent years, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the internationalist wing of Japan's powerful bureaucracy have tried to broaden the constitution's interpretation.

They would like to see Japan play a role in international affairs commensurate with its economic might. They realize full participation in UN-sponsored peacekeeping operations is key to winning a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

They also have been pressured by foreign expectations, which grew particularly intense during the Persian Gulf war, when Japan sent cash but no troops to help in the American-led effort.

The death of Nakata probably will set back their cause.

"The Japanese are rather ambivalent about the necessity of making international contributions," said Mitsukazu Shiboh, a political scientist at Tokai University. Some fear that participation in peacekeeping operations may open the way to a return of the militarism that preceded World War II, he said.